The great smartphone debate: take part and win a Naked Security t-shirt

Smartphones, such as iPhones, Androids and BlackBerrys, are a hot topic right now. Most of us have one, or we are desperate to get our hands on a newer, snazzier model.

On the street, you can spot a smartphone user at a hundred paces. They stumble along hesitantly, echoing the drunkard shuffle. Rather than sporting a vacant inebriated look, “smartphoners” stare at their hands with possessed concentration, their fingers flying about a tiny screen at lightning speed.

Indeed, it seems I am not the only one who has noticed this condition. New York is currently considering a bill that would effectively ban pedestrians from using mobile phones when crossing the road.

Thing is, smartphones are pretty amazing devices: you can basically run your entire social and business life from them. And therein lies the catch.

Many of us have two phones: one for work AND one for personal stuff. Would it not be better just to have one?

Join the smartphone debate!

We want to know where you stand on this issue, so we slapped together the smartphone debate. It is a short survey, which takes about 90 seconds to complete.

And to thank you for your efforts, we are giving away five very exclusive, very desirable (let's be honest, very sexy) Naked Security t-shirts.

Naked Security t-shirt winners will be contacted on International Looooove day: Monday February 14. Who knows, instead of a valentine, you might find out you have won the coolest t-shirt in town!

Not only does every other post cautioin against filling in surveys, but I recall a number of articles talking about the dangers of mixing home and work data on a single device (be it phone, laptop, etc).

Sharing a phone between work and home is bad enough... you can't turn work off in that case. Sharing a smartphone is a data security nightmare on SO many levels.

Even if I worked from home, I'd want a work phone and an airgapped home phone. The same goes for if I lived at work.

I think you chaps are being a bit OTT about comparing this to our usual survey advice. We routinely caution against surveys _as part of a bait-and-switch_.

This is quite different. The article specifically states that it's about a survey. (It doesn't offer a free iPad on unknown conditions, then suddenly swerve off and pop up a survey.) The purpose and the beneficiary of the survey is quite obvious. (We're not making money off some kind of undeclared affiliate connection with a third party.) The number and nature of the prizes is clearly stated. Oh, and you can trust us :-)

As for the dangers of mixing work and home data on smartphones, I agree. The risk is in no way balanced by the convenience of carrying only a single device.

But we're trying to find out what people think - if world-plus-dog is going to "converge its digital life" (or whatever 2011's trendy term for it is) _anyway_, then we'll need to find some sort of compromise by which it can be done with minimum harm to those of us who do care about our PII...

I would like to see Sophos develop more endpoint management options for the major mobile device (not just phones) OS options in particular some DLP and encryption options. These devices are increasingly prevalent and represent a growing data threat afterall.

In response to your smart comment... I too believe that we need to start using a/v software like the kind of front-door protection and zero-day initiatives that Sophos has got. But, all of this for the smart phones. Right...?, almost like having ARM installed, but it would be a special regi-matic type of clean-system approach to anti-malware.

I'd love a single device but the fact is most companies/governments spend huge amounts of money securing their networks and having multiple email accounts on one device clearly breaches this ethos. The possibility of cross contamination across accounts due to having a single device is substantial and the risk is simply to great to ignore. Therefore one device for work, one for personal use seems the best way to go.

About the author

Hi. I am a social, brand and communications expert with 10 years in senior roles in the tech space. I'm currently Sophos' s Global Director of Social Media and Communities. Proudest work achievement? Creating and launching award-winning Naked Security. Outside work, I am a mean cook, an avid reader, a chronic insomniac, a podcast obsessive and blogger .